Global Competitiveness

Standards are everywhere, yet go mostly unnoticed. They define how products, processes, and people interact, assessing these entities’ features and performance and signaling their level of quality and reliability. They can convey important benefits to trade, productivity, and technological progress and play an important role in the health and safety of individual consumers and the environment.

Though we live in an era of rapid innovation, the United States has introduced comparatively few commercial innovations within the past decade. Innovation shortfall contributes to weaker trade performance, decreased productivity growth, lower wages and many other economic woes.